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Audi Q7 3.0 TFSI The benchmark for premium SUV

This new petrol Q7 is more economical, more modest than the V8 version it replaces. Not a tough task: that car was to modesty and economy what Vin Diesel is to understatement and head-hair.

By the standards of Planet Normal, though, this Q7 – powered by the 3.0-litre supercharged V6 from the S4, instead of that gluttonous, naturally aspirated 4.2-litre V8 – is decidedly immodest and uneconomical. It still makes everything else on the road short of a big-rig truck look like a Corgi model.

And, unless an oil well has recently sprung up in your back garden, it will still provoke a pained wince every time you come to refuel it. Which will be often. The V6 may boast a less prodigious thirst than the old V8 – a car in which recording anything over 15mpg required the self-restraint of a Buddhist monk – but indulge, even fleetingly, in a spot of what the brochures refer to as ‘enthusiastic driving’, and you’ll be visiting your local service station more regularly than a man with an incurable fetish for barbecue coals and camping chairs. Though Audi quotes a combined economy of 26.4mpg, we struggled to coax the Q7 to anything more than 20.